Gratitude 9/26/11

1. 2810 Events

2. Air

3. Backing into a pole in my Porsche (It happened for a reason)

4. Vegas

5. TGI Fridays

Strietzel | Sex Stops War

Post by Jonathan Strietzel, September 17th 2011

Thanks to @shervin, @strietzel I was turned onto this amazing and modern day Lysistrata this afternoon via Twitter.

To remind you all, Lysistrata is one of the eleven Greek plays written by Aristophanes.  It’s a comical account of one woman’s ambitious vision that leads to the the end  of The Peloponnesian War. In short, Lysistrata successfully communicates her ambitious vision and  ultimately persuades all of the women of Greece to essentially “Close up Shop” and forgo sexual activities, thereby forcing their men to negotiate peace in a time where women and politics absolutely did not mix.  As humans are count to repeat history, the tale of Lysistrata seems to have been duped today in a modern day version in the form of a simple Mindanao village.  AWESOME.

 

 

Gratitude 9/11/11

1. Setorii

2. Arnaz St.

3. WeHo

4. Sushi Mon

5. The Journey

6. Learning

7. Love

8. Friendship

9. Deidre

10. Paper Cutouts in My Car

11. The Internet

12. My Mother

13. Coffee

14. Espresso

15. Open Sesame Bar

16. Jessica

17. Angel

18. Derek

19. Coffee Bean

20. Theo

21. Chris Ueland

22. Mobile Phones

23. Best Buy

24. Macbook Air

25. Life

26. Setorii’s Heart

27. KDJ

28. Christina

29. Shoes

30. Air

31. Friends

32. My Brother

33. My Sister

34. My Father

35. My aunt and cousins

36. Warren

37. Sean Vanian

38. 2810

39. Eric Kuhn

40. Mandarin Oriental

41. Adam

42. RoR

43. eSurprise

44. Dating App

45. CSS, JS, Node.JS

46. Jon Snoddy

47. Jon Kraft

48. Doug

49. Water

50. Ammenities

52. Food

53. Car

54. Charter

55. Art

56. Creative Council

57. Alice

58. Todd

59. Science

60. USC

61. John Sweat

62. FG9080

63. Thunderbolt

64. Hosting

65. School

66. Books

67. Programming

68. The Bed on Arnaz

69. Enzo

70. The Condo on Arnaz

71. All of the experiences that come with the Condo on Arnaz, so grateful.

72. The last 10 Months of my Life. So grateful.

73. The learning experiences I’ve had over the last 10 months

Macbook Pro 17″ to Macbook Air 13″

Macbook Air 17-Inch

It was time.  My old and quite amazing, life-changing 2008 Macbook Pro took a turn for the worse last week. It started shutting down unexpectidly and its boot screen started showing massive signs of random pixelation upon boot.  It became apparent that my boot issues coupled with my frequent computer crashes, screen freezes  and the dead pixel that left a trailing red line on my beautiful 17-Inch HD monitor that it was about that time to truly consider a new laptop.  But the type-A entrepreneural Fix-It mentality immediately kicked in to defend my bank account as it usually does, regardless of the purchase price or affordability of the item.

So, I found myself at my local Apple store waiting in a notoriously long line of Apple Freaks, dying to hear the call out “Mr. Jonathan Strietzel” or “Strietzel” for at least 30 minutes after my scheduled appointment. After an unfortunate wait, I found myself talking to the most genius of the Genius Bar crew within minutes at my local Apple Store at the Beverly Center.  After a short series of texts, external boots from their secure HD, they only had one verdict.  Logic board was dead or at least it was dying quickly and had very little time to live.  My Genius quickly advised me to take immediate action and to get all of my stuff in order, to notify my Macbook Pro’s Next-of-kin, back up as much as possible, get my Macbook Pro’s will up-to-date, because even with all of his pure Apple Geniusness working at full god-like force, he would be unable to repair and save my once $4,000 Top-of-the-line Macbook Pro. Except for one potential solution….

So, the Genius of the Geniuses at Apple proceeded to tell me that he did have one potential remedy for my poor Macbook Pro’s unfortunate and dire situation.  He then proceeded to tell me that he had found a donor that would be willing to donate a new Logic Board so that my Macbook Pro would have a new shot at life.  He broke the sad and uneconomical news to me that the donor logic board wasn’t quite a donation at all, but that it was in fact a “Donation” from Apple Corporation that actually came with a steep “Donor Pricing” of $500-$600 (Including his very own “Genius” services to install it).  After a brief discussion the Genius of the Geniuses confessed to me that he could not guarantee me that my logic board was the true culprit in this whole Computer freezing, shut-down and screen pixelation debacle.  So, not only was I going to risk spending $500-$600 on a new Logic Board for my once stellar Macbook Pro, I was not even guaranteed that it would fix the problem.  At $500-$600 for a “potential fix”, I immediately went into my typical and entrepreneurial calculations and efficiency mode and quickly came to this realization.

  • Macbook Pro Potential Fix (Logic Board Purchasing and Install): $500-$600, Success Probability %50 at best. Still a terrible dead pixel on the beautiful 17-Inch monitor.
  • Purchasing of a new base-model 11-inch Macbook Air: $999, Success Probability %100, Usability and Efficiency due to small screen size: Decent, New crystal clear screen.. not to shabby
  • Upgrading from the base model 11-Inch Macbook Air to the standard 13-inch Macbook Air with 125GB SSD at $1299, Success Probability %100, Usability Efficiency %100, Spread: $300 from the base 11-Inch Model and $800 from the potential but risky logic board fix, even larger and more amazing 13-Inch Screen: Awesome.
  • Ambitious thought Jumps in: Just go all out and go for the high end Macbook Pro at $2500, but, suffer the slowness of a non SSD Drive with moving parts.  Moving parts are “So 2009” in my brain so, the only realistic jump from the SSD Macbook Air series would be to upgrade the Macbook Pro 17-Inch to a full on 125GB SSD, driving the price to just shy of $3000.  I also would have the ability to play CD’s on the Macbook Pro’s Optical drive, but, just as with moving parts, CD’s are “So 2009” as well.  We all know everything is moving to the cloud and having another piece of hardware with moving parts that your toting around on a daily basis is a 2009 formula for future disaster.
  • Quick Ideology Review: I quickly validate if spending $3000-$4000 on the super of the duper portable laptop machines that Apple has to offer is economically viable and reasonable for me and I very quickly came to this calculation.
  • Macbook Air 11-Inch $999 – Macbook Air 13-Inch $1299: Spread $300
  • Macbook Air 13-Inch $1299 – Macbook Pro (Anything less than 17-Inch): Didn’t matter, At the Macbook Pro level, in my opinion, its 17-Inch or bust. Go big or go home  😉
  • Macbook Air 13-Inch $1299 – Macbook Pro 17-Inch $3000 (With SSD): Spread $1700
  • Facts: New Macbook Air 13-Inch = Cool, Super lightweight, no moving parts, Nice screen (No dead pixels) all at a $700 premium over a “Potential” fix of the Logic Board of my old Macbook Pro
  • Facts: New Macbook Pro 17-Inch = Awesome large and beastly machine, HD to the max, Powerhouse Laptop, Moving parts (even if I Upgraded to the SSD, the Optical drive would still be moving away) but at a $1700 premium.

STRIETZEL’s CHOICE: Macbook Air 13-Inch, 125GB SSD (No need for the larger as nearly NOTHING is stored locally on my machines anymore due to amazing cloud-based services such as Google Apps (Email, Calendar, Contacts etc..), DropBox and Apples new App and iTunes Store that records all of your purchases in the cloud and with the coming advent of iCloud, it will be even more obvious to average consumers soon that buying larger local storage devices for your laptop simply doesn’t make sense. Its all about fast processing, lightning fast data retrieval, no moving parts, and file accessibility (storing all of your data in the cloud).

Gratitude 9/9/11

1. Chris Ueland

2. Setorii

3. Warren Jolly

4. WePay

5. Shawn and Loui

6. Lavazza Espresso

7. Office Space

8. Positive thoughts and energy

9. Daryll Merchant

10. Scott Ross

11. KDJ

12. Brenna

13. LGB Airport

14. Macbook Air

15. Fashion

16. Mosquito Nets

17. Medicine

18. Religion

19. Love

20. My Mother

21. My Father

22. My brother and sister

23. My Grandmother

24. Auntie, Uncle

25. Ryan

26. Jamie

27. Jeff

28. Ben

29. Email

30. SMS

31. Porsche

32. Cooking

33. Sushi

34. Granola

35. Le Pain Quotidien

36. WiFi

37. Thunderbolt

38. Apps

39. Affirmation Work

40. Masako

41. Dianna

42. Mike

43. Meka Homes

44. Anthony

45. AB

46. Kai Huang

47. Theo Agranat

48. Tai Lopez

49. Matt Mickiewicz

50. Mike Nguyen

51. Chester

52. Scott Ross

53. Jon Snoddy

54. Jon Kraft

55. Jon’s Family: Robo7 and the Kids

56. Breadbar

57. Beverly Center

58. Urth Cafe

59. Berkeley

60. MIT

61. Doug Fidaleo

62. Possibiilty

63. Hope

64. Science

65. A good cuddle

66. Flowers

67. PCH

68. Wineries

69. Bacara Resort

70. Maui

71. Airplanes

72. Kill Bill

73. The Notebook

74. Blogs and WordPress

75. SEO

76. Art Gastellum

77. Identity Management

78. Greg Gastelum

79. Greg Baldi

80. AbFlyer

81. Tim Ferris and the KettleBell

82. My Health

83. My grandfather

84. Clean Water

85. Sean and Senia

86. 2810 Private Resort

87. Sin City

88. NY

89. San Fran

90. Rick Marini

91. Cristina B

92. Bianca

93. Nikki

94. Geroldi

95. Brooklyn

96. Manhattan

98. Safari

99. Photoshop

100. Illustrator

101. Adam Kangas

102. CSS Outsourcing

103. RoR

104. Video Chatting

105. Music

106. Events

107. Fireplaces

108. Cabins

109. Buenos Aires

110. Uruguay

111. Land

112. TV

113. Freedom

114. Capitalism

115. Air Conditioning

116. Chess

117. Power and Electricity

118. Sanitation

119. Los Angeles

120. Peter Lamas

121. Tyler

122. Precious Metals Industry

123. Brainstorms with Suge Patel

124. A good sportcoat

125. College friends

126. Roger Douglas

127. Spencer

128. Michael Helfant

129. Robert and Leo

130. Caroline Barberio

131. Michelle Stevenson

132. Jonas

133. Deb

134. McKenzie

135. Enzo

136. Printers

137. Keys

138. A good bed

139. Vacations

140. Relaxation

141. Support

142. Trials and Tribulation

143. God

144. Chuck Taylors

145. Jim Casparie

146. Elliott

147. Precept, Lex and Chrystal, Beth, Megan, Lisa, Ebru

148. Travis and Jon

149. Chess.com

150. VS Chess

151. Big Stage

152. Machine Learning

153. JP Lewis

154. Zenyao Mo

155. Jeff Pai

156. Mike and Patrick

157. Joe

158. PJ

159. Jeremy Arnold

160. Brian Dilley

161. Kayla

162. Agencies

163. Tim and Shelby

164. Trevor and Taylor

165. Rosalie

166. Soccer

167. Notebooks

168. A mothers love

169. A fathers love

170. My close family

171. Eating Utensils

Gratitude 9/3/11

1. Family
2. Dr. Jolly
3. Open Sesame
4. Jim and Angela
5. Starbucks
6. Belmont Shore (2nd St.)
7. iPhone
8. iPad
9. Natraj Cuisine
10. My brother
11. My sister
12. Water
13. Opportunity
14. Sean Vanian
15. 2810

16. WePay
17. Terminal
18. Incredibles
19. Jenny
20. Kdj
21. Chuck Taylors
22. Money
24. Health
25. Sleep
26. Matt Trainer
27. Chess
28. Bella G
29. Words with Friends
30. Monitors
31. Mac’s
32. Books
33. PDF’s
34. Macallan 18
35. Tai Lopez
36. Maya
37. Derek
48. Andy Liu
49. Theo
50. Chris Ueland
51. Jack Bell
52. Trackpad
53. Oatmeal
54. Long Beach
55. eBay
56. SEO
57. Gold Reviews
58. Anthony Wheaton
59. Setorii
60. Breakfast
61. Espresso
62. Crepes
63. GoW3

64. CK

65. The Art Gastelum Foundation

66. Strietzel investment strategies